[Scarlett.]

The old order crumbles, and nowhere faster than in the high street. Safeway vanished, to be replaced by Morrisons. Virgin music shops transmogrified into Zavvi. Woolworths failed, leaving a sad void in 800 town centres.

Often the casualties are replaced by global brands as familiar in Bogotá and Bombay as in Bolton and Basingstoke. Local or national names make way for international brands such as Starbucks, Gap and McDonald’s.

Now three of the most familiar high street names are to be simultaneously expunged and replaced by a brand already emblazoned on 14,000 establishments from Mexico City to Madrid.

Santander, the Spanish banking group, announced plans yesterday to axe the names of Abbey, Bradford & Bingley and Alliance & Leicester, all of which it owns, and put its own name, alongside its red flame logo, on all 1,300 branches across Britain at a cost of £12 million.

The bowler-hat logo of B&B is to be consigned to the attic, and the orange and blue cross favoured by A&L will soon be dismantled. Instead, the name of a medium-sized port in northern Spain, where the bank was founded in 1857, is to become a familiar sight.

Abbey traces its roots to 1874 with the formation of the Abbey Road & St John’s Wood Permanent Benefit Building Society, while B&B and A&L boast antecedents going back to 1851 and 1852 respectively.

The writing was on the wall in January, when Abbey began branding itself as “Abbey, part of the Santander Group”. Yesterday António Horta-Osório, head of Santander UK, went much farther, saying that the old names would go almost completely.

Credit cards issued by the three banks will start to carry the Santander name from July. Abbey and B&B branches will be rebadged from January. The last of the A&L branches will be gone by December next year.

The changes would be beneficial for customers of the three banks because they would be able to do business in any Santander branch in Britain, Mr Horta-Osório said. That would give B&B and A&L customers a network four times as large as before. There might be branch closures in towns with obvious overlaps, but these would be offset by openings elsewhere.

He said that the 25 million Britons who were customers of the three franchises were comfortable with the name of Santander, which had come through the banking crisis relatively unscathed. “Our brand is seen as a safe haven,” Mr Horta-Osório said.

Only the foreign operations of the three British banks would maintain their existing names, though the Abbey brand would continue to be used in marketing to financial advisers.

Santander has spent heavily promoting a single brand name across the globe, signing up sports stars including Pelé and Lewis Hamilton, and sponsoring international events such as the America’s Cup. But its name has a sour taste for some British bankers.

It was Santander that teamed up with Sir Fred Goodwin, of Royal Bank of Scotland, to buy and break up the Dutch bank ABN Amro two years ago. Santander got ABN’s choice Brazilian operations and prospered; Sir Fred got the fuzzy end of the lollipop and all but destroyed RBS.

The Spanish bank began its foray into British banking in 2004, buying Abbey for £8 billion. Last year it bought A&L for £1.3 billion and later paid £612 million for the non-toxic parts of the collapsed B&B.

A single brand name in financial services allows savings in marketing and better consumer recognition, which is why Aviva, the insurer, is axing the Norwich Union name. HSBC abandoned the Midland Bank name seven years after buying it in 1992.

David Roberts, of the branding consultant Fitch, said the Santander name change could be successful. “It gives a message of stability and strength which people are now looking for.” But he warned that not all rebrandings were a success. The change to Abbey from Abbey National and dropping of the umbrella logo in 2004 were seen as a branding flop with more style than substance, he said.

Other savings companies are less convinced about the one-name strategy. Graham Beale, chief executive of Nationwide Building Society, pledged yesterday to retain the names of the Derbyshire and Cheshire building societies, which it bought recently. Nationwide bought the Portman Building Society in the South of England two years ago and axed the name overnight. People closed their accounts in protest. “We lost some of the local goodwill that attached to the Portman name,” Mr Beale said.

Santander has no doubts about doing to Leicester and Bradford what Aviva is doing to Norwich. “Although I’m sure there will be some sadness in local areas like Leicester, the fact that we’ve made a commitment to maintaining our offices in those areas has gone down well,” a spokesman said.

[Harry!]

Santander is a rubbish name. Why can't they keep the original names.

[Sticks]

I bank with A&L so what happens to my overdraught arrangement

[xDramatick]

I'm with abbey